Apparently it’s all just a big tragic mix-up.

You see it was those nasty short-sellers and journalists and well we’re not entirely sure who else was in on the conspiracy but a lot of bad people. A lot.

Now I know it is hard to believe but… true. True! It seems they snuck in at night – after New York closed and before Tokyo opened – and stuffed more and more assets on to our books. Mostly illiquid stuff – they knew what they were doing! The scoundrels… Night after night. Like clockwork. And at least to start, the income and mark-to-market gains from this stuff juiced our profits. Since we’re very good at what we do, we didn’t notice – didn’t think the doubling of our profits suspicious – and just adjusted our comp accordingly.

And then POW. They set off their nefarious trap. Told the world we were levered 60 to 1. Hell even I know on a bad day you can wipe yourself out trading 2-year notes with that kind of leverage… sheesh. Like, whatever dude. But you know what??? It was true… We dug deeper and found the leak – they’d hacked in from a little pension fund in New Zealand or something and bunged us so full of assets that we were like a turkey the day before Christmas. Bastards. I blame it on IT. Or operations. But mainly I blame it on these evil speculators who pushed our leverage through the stratosphere just to make a quick easy buck. But I feel horrible about it.

In other news Dick Fuld testified before Congress…

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